“As Minister for Health I am fully committed to the introduction of legislation on ‘safe access’ zones around our healthcare facilities. This commitment is in the prgramme for government.” said Health Minister Stephen Donnelly in a statement issued on Saturday afternoon. His statement was in response to an Irish Examiner article, by their Deputy Political Editor Elaine Loughlin, about the scrapping of plans to legislate for safe access zones around hospitals, family planning centres, and all healthcare facilities that provide abortion services.
Notably absent from the Minister for Health’s statement is a timeline for when the legislation that he is “fully committed” to introducing will, in fact, be introduced.
It does, however, include the well-worn lines “It was originally intended to provide for safe access to termination of pregnancy services in the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018. However, a number of legal issues were identified which necessitated further consideration.” This is something Stephen Donnelly’s predecessor Simon Harris also told us while insisting that separate legislation would be fast-tracked.
For its part, the Department of Health stated that “there has been a limited number of reports of protests or other actions relating to termination of pregnancy” which it sees as “an extremely positive development”. How much intimidation of people seeking abortion services is acceptable to the Minister for Health and his department? At what point does “a limited number of reports of protests” warrant the legislation we were promised in 2018?
Anti-abortion protests have included groups standing outside the National Maternity Hospital with small white coffins, displaying graphic and misleading imagery outside rural community hospitals, protests each day during Lent outside Limerick Maternity Hospital, and the picketing of GP practices. Not all protests make the news, so it is safe to say that the number of these types of protests is higher than reported. Covid-19 restrictions on people gathering in groups likely also had an impact on the “limited number of reports of protests”, although it is not clear if the Department of Health had considered this when issuing their statement.
The assertion that existing public order legislation is enough “to protect people accessing services, staff and local residents” is misguided, at best. Anyone who reported similar anti-abortion protests outside hospitals and healthcare facilities in the run-up to the referendum in 2018 will know that responses varied across the country and often depended on how willing individual gardaí were to move the protesters and their graphic imagery on.
This is why safe access zones were deemed necessary. Not only by pro-choice campaigners but also by the current Government, who committed to establishing exclusion zones around medical facilities in the programme for government, and the previous Government who initially wanted to include safe access zones in the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act.
Yet here we are, three years later, still standing in front of the Government asking them to do their job as legislators. Is it any wonder that the minister’s most recent commitment to safe access zones rings hollow?
Together for Safety — a national campaign calling for the implementation of safe access zones, which launched earlier this year — is working with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) to draft legislation to introduce safe access zones around healthcare facilities so that people seeking abortion services, health care providers, all staff, and every person attending hospitals, GP clinics, and family planning centres can do so without facing protests.
Senator Annie Hoey announced the Labour Party’s plan to publish its own legislation in September if the Government does not follow through on its commitment.
Together for Safety are also collecting reports from people who have been affected by these protests and collaborating with Dr Camilla Fitzsimons from Maynooth University to collect information on anti-abortion protests and demonstrations from abortion service providers.
We are once again in a position where people need to share painful personal experiences for the Government to act. A move that will not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to the provision of reproductive healthcare in Ireland.
Last weekend’s U-turn, followed by a U-turn on the U-turn, happened against the backdrop of the inconsistencies surrounding the lifting of Covid-19 related restrictions in maternity hospitals.
The issue of ownership of the land on which our new National Maternity Hospital is set to be built is still unresolved. The Sisters of Charity insist they will not be involved with the running of the hospital. Given the devastating effects that church influence has had — and continues to have — on women’s lives and people’s access to reproductive healthcare, the campaign for public ownership and public operation of the hospital is both understandable and necessary.
There has been no legislation to regulate rogue crisis pregnancy agencies.
Abortion has been available under the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act since January 2019, yet just one in ten GPs and only 10 of the 19 maternity units are providing abortion services.
There are no abortion providers in Sligo, with Sligo Action for Reproductive Rights Access (SARRA) saying that “A policy by the HSE of passively waiting for local GPs to step up to the plate has failed. GPs need support, resources, and training from the HSE.”
People who receive a diagnosis of a fatal or severe foetal anomaly are still forced to leave the country to have a termination for medical reasons.
The legislation is scheduled for review, a process that allows us to make much-needed improvements to the law. Telemedicine for abortion must be kept in place once the Covid-19 pandemic measures end. We must remove the medically unnecessary mandatory three-day waiting period. We must increase the number of abortion providers so that abortion is available in every county and all our maternity units. Doctors must have all the supports and training they need to achieve this. We must remove arbitrary gestational limits because too many people are failed by our legislation.
The legislative review must be fully independent and more than a box-ticking exercise. As with safe access zones, we need a clear timeline of when this will happen. Empty words are not enough. We need Government action.
Abortion services must be free, safe, legal, and accessible locally for everyone who wants or needs them. This includes people being able to attend their appointments without having to deal with anti-abortion protests on their way to the door.
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